Abstinence Cinema tracks the surprising sex-negative turn that Hollywood films have taken, associating premarital sex with shame and degradation, while romanticizing traditional nuclear families, courtship rituals, and gender roles. Locating these regressive sexual politics in everything from Twilight to Taken to Superbad, Casey Ryan Kelly examines how these films echo the rhetoric of the evangelical abstinence-only movement, then analyzes how they are particularly disempowering to young women, who are judged strictly on the basis of their sexuality.  

CASEY RYAN KELLY is an associate professor of critical communication and media studies at Butler University, in Indianapolis, Indiana. 

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Cinema of Abstinence

1         Melodrama and Postfeminist Abstinence: The Twilight Saga (2008-2012)

2         Man/Boys and Born-Again Virgins: The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

3         The Monstrous Girls and Absentee Fathers of Horror: The Possession (2012)

4         Abstinence, the Global Sex Industry, and Racial Violence: Taken (2008)

5         Sexsploitation in Abstinence Satires

Conclusion: Counternarratives

Notes

Filmography

Bibliography

Index